This flower arrangement was on our table.


Here's the menu, or, more accurately, the chef's tasting menu. There was also a lighter, more vegetable-based menu, but I didn't take a picture of it and didn't order it. We had to choose one or the other. From there what we ate was basically fixed, except where there was a pair of dishes between the line breaks and we had to choose between them. If you look at the bigger version of the photo, you'll notice how whoever writes the menu (Keller?) is seriously infatuated with quotation marks.


This ridiculous, imported water was "complimentary." I do admit it tasted unusually refreshing.


First, the waiter--a friendly, extremely professional, grey-haired man--served us two "amuse-bouches" to begin our meal. I didn't get any pictures of these, but I'll link to other pictures on the web. The first was a small bowl (one each) of gruyere "gougères." Not bad. The second was a "cornet" of salmon tartare. Tragically, the cornets were filled with red onion-infused freme fraiche, so I reluctantly donated mine to M.

The first course was probably the most perfect of them all:

"Oysters and Pearls": "Sabayon" of Pearl Tapioca with Beau Soleil Oysters and White Sturgeon Caviar

It's pretty much impossible to describe how awesome this dish was. I'd never tasted sturgeon caviar before, but I can see why it's so expensive. The oysters were about a zillion times tastier than any I'd ever eaten, small and delicate and almost buttery. The tapioca was a perfect pairing. Pure genius. This dish was so good, in fact, that I scraped every last bit from the bowl, even though the tapioca had chives in it. Chives and onions are typically deal-breakers for me, so this pretty much constitutes objective proof of the appetizer's flawlessness.

I think this bread arrived after the oysters. Once again, the bread was perfect. It came along with two kinds of butter (you can see one in the background): one was a fatty, unsalted, French butter; the other was a salted variety produced on a farm in Vermont that has only seven cows. (We definitely appreciated the over-the-top storytelling that accompanied the food.)